Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction
What you get:
- Hardcover Edition of Shooting Up
- Early Access to the Audiobook + E-book (to be delivered by end of January 2026)
- Infinite Books Bookmark
What you get:
- Early Access to the Audiobook + E-book (delivered by late January)
What you get:
- Signed First-Edition Hardcover of Shooting Up
- Exclusive moderated Q&A with the author (recording included)
- Early Access to the Audiobook + E-book (delivered by late January)
- Infinite Books Bookmark
- For every deluxe bundle purchased, one copy of Shooting Up will be donated to a partner organization serving individuals and communities impacted by addiction and HIV/AIDS. Donation partners and distribution are selected and coordinated directly by our team to ensure books reach appropriate programs.
Shooting Up is an extraordinary memoir of a unique childhood among heroin addicts during the AIDS epidemic, but it is a universal story of love and loss that is powerfully moving. At a time when society is so deeply divided—and faith is a wedge that is often used—it is refreshing to read a missionary kid’s true story of compassion and empathy for the outcasts. The book is also a tale filled with grace and humor in life’s darkest moments.
Shooting Up is an astonishing work that opens your eyes—and your heart—to a whole new world, one that is as beautiful and inspiring as it is gritty and harrowing. Jonathan Tepper is an extraordinarily gifted writer who has somehow managed to write a memoir that is at once heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and joyous.
In stark, often heart-rending prose, Jonathan tells the story of growing up with his three brothers and missionary parents in San Blas, a drug-overrun neighborhood of Madrid. It is a tale of tragedy and triumph in the midst of loss and death. Ultimately, Shooting Up is a powerful testament to the redemptive power of faith, friendship, and love. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. I cried, I laughed, I was changed.
Shooting Up recounts a young man’s coming of age in the unlikeliest of places and finds joy, wisdom, and humor in the darkest of moments. Reading this book made me think anew about grace, gratitude, and the hard roads that take us there.
Jonathan Tepper’s story is remarkable. From his father’s dramatic conversion to the years pioneering Betel, this is the story of no ordinary family. I am so glad that Jonathan is sharing his extraordinary experience through this account.
I, too, grew up as a home-schooled “missionary kid,” so I “get” Jonathan Tepper's brilliant memoir Shooting Up. Tepper's story about addiction, AIDS and his parents' work with addicts in Spain in the 1990s is an insanely entertaining and wild account. In fact, it's the most riveting memoir I've ever read. Who else recalls his childhood with lines like these? “As a graduation gift, my father took me to see drug rehabs. It was what we did as a family.”
It has been one of the privileges of my life to know the Tepper family and witness first-hand the marvel that is Betel, where countless people have found hope, healing, community, and new beginnings. Here, in his memoir Shooting Up, Jonathan Tepper, with great skill, eloquence, humor, and provocation, tells us the extraordinary story of Betel. This is not just another read—it’s an event.
Jonathan Tepper’s gut-wrenching, inspiring memoir Shooting Up immerses you so deeply in its characters that you feel as if you’re living—and suffering—alongside them. Set amid the ravages of the AIDS epidemic in Madrid, this gorgeously crafted coming-of-age story is both luminous and profoundly humane. An unforgettable read that’s impossible to put down.
